Perspective
by Chris7221
Summary: July 23, 2016. My last day on Earth. One day I'm wondering what to do with my life, the next I'm fighting monsters and world-ending schemes. Remnant definitely looked a lot better on paper. SI/OC. Mostly following canon with some potentially massive twists.
1. Last Days

After failing at writing anything resembling an SI time after time (Emergence doesn't count), I'm trying again. Unlike all the other weird ones, this one is a straight and serious SI. Well, as close as I can get, which is probably going to be not very.

 **Perspective – a RWBY SI**

 **Prologue: Last Days**

 _The road to Hell is paved with good intentions._  
-proverb, origin disputed

"If anyone can hear me, please respond, over."

This was it. We'd failed, the bad guys won, if I made a difference it was the wrong one. The world was going to hell around me and even if it wasn't exactly my fault, I sure as hell didn't help things.

"We're under attack from the monsters and they've turned our own machines against us. I don't know who's left. They're attacking the city and civilians are dying."

In retrospect, I probably should have done a lot of things differently. I should have stayed out of it, shouldn't have tried to fix everything. I knew everything was going to go downhill and I figured I could stop that from happening. Like so many wannabe heroes, hubris was my down fall.

"Please, if anyone can hear this, send help."

But I didn't, and now I'm here, crawling through the Emerald Forest, desperately calling for help from someone who would probably never respond with the world going to hell around me. How did I get here?

That's a really long story.

* * *

July 23, 2016.

Britain was leaving the European Union. Trump had just been chosen as the Republican nominee. Erdogan's purges were in full swing. Pokemon Go was sweeping the nation. I was still waiting for Windows 10 Redstone and the Zenfone 3.

It was my last day on Earth.

I sure as hell didn't wake up thinking that. I woke up a bit nervous about travelling, because I don't travel well and travelling on a plane doubly so. That was counterbalanced by a fair bit of excitement about seeing my friend Simon again for the first time since high school. He'd gone one way, I went another, everyone else had gone a third, and the rest is history.

Was it already three years? I feel old. I mean, I know I'm _not_ , but it's all relative, isn't it? I'm technically an adult now. Which is a bit scary, but that's another topic entirely.

At least it wasn't an early flight. I cannot handle mornings, period, full stop. Give me a can of Pepsi Max or an Awake bar and I'll get moving a little better, but I'm still somewhere between "totally incoherent" and "man bitch" any time earlier than ten in the morning. This flight left at one in the afternoon, which meant I was actually halfway awake when I went through the pain in the ass that was post-9/11 airport security. Between my general demeanour and my overgrown beard, I was expecting it to be more trouble than it actually was. Nope, just pull my Frell XPS out of my bag, toss it in the tray with my shitty old S2, step through the scanner, and pick up my crap again.

I would be flying on a Q400 for the first time, and that was something I was excited about. It was a neat little plan, a ridiculously overpowered turboprop in the age of commuter jets. I mean, it was probably just as shitty to fly on- probably worse with the gigantic props- but it was neat and I'd only seen one up close at an airshow before. The half hour long wait at the gate had a nice panoramic view of Q400, though I'd pretty much given up and started writing awful fanfiction five minutes in.

The rest was standard airplane fare. They announce boarding beginning at five to one, I wait my turn, hand my ticket, and trudge down the boarding bridge. I take my seat near the front of the plane on the exit row. I paid extra for that seat for a few reasons. First, I have annoyingly long legs and a nineteen inch seat pitch is a recipe for instant cramps. Second, it's close to the bathroom, although even I probably won't use that on the hour and a half long flight. Third, it's right next to the exit so I can get out of here in a hurry if the universe decides my flight would make a good episode of Mayday.

A middle aged gentleman sat down beside me just after I finished stowing my backpack and adjusting my seat belt. Right away, he shoves his laptop bag under the seat, gives me a little nod, then clips his seatbelt in, leans back, and closes his eyes.

As we began rolling down the runway, the lone flight attendant gave us the usual advertisement and takeoff spiel. She didn't show me how to open the exit door. For shame. While we taxi down the runway, I grab the card and read it through. Wonderful reading to counter pre-takeoff jitters, but it's not like I have anything better to do.

Almost immediately after takeoff, the guy beside me fell asleep. In the middle of the day. Okay, sure, I guess some people are like that. I'm the opposite. Like Jack Ryan, I never sleep on a plane. Unlike Jack Ryan, it's because it's uncomfortable, not because I'm afraid it's going to fall out of the sky.

Maybe Jack Ryan had a point.

Remember how I said it was my last day on Earth? If you were guessing the flight had something to do with that, you'd be right. It was a routine flight until about halfway in. I was playing Pokemon on my phone when It happened. What was It, you ask? A bright flash of light, a bang, flickering lights, two turboprops spooling back and the beginning of the most terrifying thing that had ever happened in my life until that point.

I managed to corral my phone back into my pocket before the little turboprop did an honest to god barrel roll (no barrel rolls, Tex!) and threw everything not tied down halfway across the cabin.

The rest I remember only as incoherent snippets.

The flight attendant urging calm and shouting at us to brace for impact. The look of abject terror on the gentleman's face as he woke up from his nap into a nightmare. The cry of a baby audible above the screams. The blaring of alarms and colourful language from the cockpit.

That terror, though, that was the one thing crystal clear to this day. We knew we were going to die. We didn't think, didn't guess, we knew that the rest of our lives were measured in seconds. Even as the roll slowed and the plane levelled out and the ground came up to meet us.

I should have been thinking about my parents or my friends or God and Jesus or Vishnu or something in my final moments, but all I could think of was the mistakes I'd made in the past few years of my life. I had not made the transition to adulthood gracefully, that's for sure. One year wasted, two years of education and not much else, no girlfriend, no job, a lot of potential as a NEET and not much else.

I put my head between my legs and screamed.

* * *

The next thing I knew, we were on the ground. I'm not sure if I blacked out or blocked out the memories or something. One moment I had my head between my legs and we were going in. The next, I was sitting up and we were sitting still on the ground. I heard some moaning around me, but I didn't feel any pain myself. If I had been thinking rationally, I might have attributed it to adrenaline, but I wasn't thinking rationally at the time.

Are we okay?

Nope. I smell smoke, I hear burning, I feel heat, I see flames. There's one thought on my mind and it's to get the fuck out of here before we fry.

This is where some extraordinary people rise to the occasion, becoming heroes out of the blue and saving the lives of their fellow passengers. I would open the door, yell at everyone to get out, drag a few out and be the last one off the plane.

I'm not a hero. I turned the handle, pushed the door out, grabbed my backpack, and jumped out of the wrecked plane.

Yes, I know one of those things is not on the List Of Things To Do When Evacuating a Burning Airplane. First, that laptop was $1500 of someone else's money, and second, I'd just been slammed into the ground at a hundred kilometres an hour and was jumping out of a burning plane and I'm not exactly thinking straight god damn it.

The drop wasn't exactly pleasant. Not because the plane was high up off the ground. No, because it _wasn't_. I was expecting a drop of at least a few feet, but the exit was almost level with the dirt around it. It was painful like when you're used to stepping out of an SUV and encounter a sedan for the first time in months.

I cursed and bolted away from the plane. We had landed in what looked like a fairly average forest, but fortunately for me it wasn't very dense. I don't know how far I made it, but I couldn't feel the heat of the plane anymore when I stopped running.

There were many things someone better than me would do at this point. Assess the situation rationally, plan a survival strategy. Go back and try to help the other survivors. At least try to call 911 on my phone or something.

Nope. I sat down against a tree and cried like a bitch.

* * *

I don't know how long I actually sat there leaning against the tree. I do remember that nobody else from the plane showed up to join me. Maybe they were all dead, maybe they just went the other direction. I wish I could say I was pondering some serious meaning of life stuff, but mostly my brain was stuck in a loop of "holy fuck I was just in a plane crash"-"what the fuck am I going to to now", occasionally interrupted by an errant thought about Pokemon.

At some point, I got restless. Not desperate, more like bored. It's a hard feeling to describe. Like I thought I should be doing something but had no idea what that something was. I took a drink from my five dollar airport water. I pulled out a granola bar, stared at it for a minute, and put it away because I really didn't feel like eating. I stood up, kicked the tree and got into a one-sided shouting match with it. I pulled out my phone, tried to place a 911 call, and found there was no service out here.

I carried on aimlessly fucking around for a good amount of time before an unholy abomination from Hell stumbled out of the woods. Yes, unholy abomination from Hell. That's no exaggeration. This thing is the kind of thing that shambles out of your nightmares.

It was, without a doubt, the most terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life up to that point. Considering I'd just walked away from a plane crash, that was saying something. It was kind of like a bear, cranked up to eleven and high on anabolic steroids. Massive clams the length of my goddamn hand extended from its paws. Its face was covered in a bone mask with _glowing red eyes in it._ It's eyes were also _glowing red_. Oh, and it was _fucking huge_.

This was definitely not natural and yet it was oddly familiar.

I'll admit, I screamed like a little girl at that point. Leaving my backpack by the tree, I scrambled for the treeline opposite the superbear, fat lot of good that would do me.

"Kyyyaaaah!" A red streak appeared out of the trees, slamming into the side of the monster. It stumbled with the hit, before smacking the red shape out of the air. It went flying into the trees, and a different object went flying the other way, landing a pace away from me.

Well, shit.

Through conscious effort or sheer luck, I'm not sure, but I didn't make two counts of being useless into a triple streak. That thing was going to go after me next, and I wanted it _fucking dead_ before it made me into dinner.

I guess survival instinct is a hell of a thing.

I didn't have a weapon on me for obvious reasons, but I recognized the object beside me as a rifle. Maybe more Mass Effect than Cabela's, but I was pretty sure it was a rifle. There were a lot of questions that I didn't think about at the time. All I cared about was where the trigger was and which end the bullets came out of.

I picked up the red rifle, lined up the telescopic sight, and pulled the trigger. I couldn't actually figure out how to shoulder it, so I was lying on the ground with the back of the weapon sort of braced against the ground. Even still, the recoil felt like it was going to break my wrist. I didn't care. That monster was going _down_. I reached around the side of the weapon for what I hoped was the bolt handle and yanked it back before pulling the trigger again. The monster stumbled, but it _refused to die_. Rack, bang. Rack, bang. Rack, click. Tap, rack, click.

You've got to be _fucking_ kidding me.

Before I could formulate a plan or non-plan, another vaguely-defined shape zipped out of the trees. I wasn't sure, but I thought this one swiped with some kind of something rather than just slamming into the monster. Whatever it was cleaved the monster clean in two, seemingly with zero effort at all.

The grey shape which I now recognized as a grizzled man in a tattered cloak with a fuckoff huge sword made a motion toward me which I didn't understand before heading into the woods again. He emerged with a red-clothed girl who was probably the first blur I'd seen earlier.

At that moment, everything clicked. The beast was a Creature of Grimm. The people standing before me were Ruby Rose and Qrow Branwen. This was Remnant.

Now, I'm not a fainter. I've never fainted in my life. I've _felt_ like fainting here and there, but I've never _actually_ passed out on the floor. Or, at least, I hadn't, until then.

"All the nope."

Thump.

* * *

A few errant notes: I'm probably going to keep going with this for a while. I probably won't go too far off the rails, but I'm hoping to put a unique spin on the concept. It's going to be very hard to strike a balance between an overpowered SI and a useless SI. The world of Remnant here is similar to that of Emergence but differs in several key ways and is not the same as either Fateful Flight or Emergence. Expect some Deus Ex Machina, things will get complicated, and this is set just before Volume 1. And I'm mostly winging this.


	2. Far From Home

**Far From Home**

 _What's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning? Wish I hadn't._  
-Steven Patrick Morrissey

"Hey, mister, wake up!" A voice that sounded vaguely like Ruby Rose from RWBY called, stirring me from my slumber.

"I'm not that old," I muttered in response. Where was I sleeping. What was going on again?

Oh, right.

Fuck me sideways.

The flight. The crash. The Grimm. I'm panicking on the inside, my mind running through all kinds of scenarios and things and coming up with nothing useful. I manage to channel my inner Marty McFly. "This can't be happening."

"It is happening," a gravelly voice said firmly. Qrow Branwen stood by the rapidly disappearing body of the Grimm with his sword at the ready. "I'm Qrow Branwen, a Huntsman. Your airship crashed. It's very dangerous here. You'll be safe with us, but I need you to do exactly what I say. Do you understand?"

"What about the others?" I ask, half-ignoring the question. There were what, fifty other people on that flight? "The crash site's that way, we need to look for survivors. Where's the search and rescue?"

"We just came from the crash site," Qrow told me. "There's nobody left there. Maybe some of them made it to shelter- there's a few people living on this part of the island. But there's nobody back there."

His tone made it pretty clear that he didn't think they were. After a very, very brief existence, _homo sapiens sapiens_ was now functionally extinct on Remnant.

Yes, that's a very weird way of saying "I'm totally alone on a foreign world and everything I know and love is gone", but believe it or not I wasn't actually going through that angst yet. I think I was just too overwhelmed to really chain together a thought that coherent. It's like my brain was trying to parse a bunch of malformed data and at some point just said nope and threw an uncaught exception.

Qrow handed me my backpack, "Do you have any weapons in there?"

"How the fuck would I- nevermind." They probably let people carry weapons on airships here, but the most lethal thing I had was my laptop. "Nope."

"Okay. That's fine. We need to get moving. Stick close to me." Qrow said firmly.

* * *

Let's get one thing clear right off the bat. I'm not an outdoorsy type. I'm more inclined to sit in my nice comfy spinny chair all day, and that's done exactly what one would think to my physical condition. I don't like plants, I don't like forests, a walk in the woods is not my idea of fun. So following what essentially amounted to a pair of superathletes through a (thankfully not too dense) forest was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do at that point. The threat of big scary monsters were the icing on the cake. I knew I was slowing them down and I felt like I was totally busting my ass.

Man, it would really be great to get back to whatever passes for civilization here. I tried to focus on that. Get through this, get to a safe location, figure out what the fuck I'm going to do now.

"Hey, what's your name?" Qrow asked me suddenly as we made our way through the bushes.

I almost answered normally before realizing how fucking weird my name would be here, and not just because it's not a colour.

Time for a brief lesson in etymology. My name is a Biblical name that has something to do with Christ. Bearer of Christ or Disciple of Christ or something like that. Which is just fine in the Christian-dominated Western world. Half of what we call "English" names are Biblical in origin. But here, well, I have no idea if Christianity is a thing on this world. There's some interesting questions for a theologist in there.

I'm a technologist (I think). It sounds similar but we really don't do the same thing. At all. We solve problems with practical solutions. The practical solution here was to make shit up, or at least that's what I thought at the time.

"Cyan." In retrospect, it would have been easier to just tell the truth. Would have saved me some trouble later. But I wasn't exactly thinking straight back then.

If you'd literally fallen out the sky into what basically amounts to a self-insert, would you?

Qrow seemed to take my answer in stride. "Okay, Cyan, where do you come from?"

I had to think about this one a bit. I decided to be vague and fill it in later. "Vale. I live in the city, but not quite downtown."

Fuck I'm dumb. I'm supposedly from a place that should be familiar to these people that they're probably going to ask me about! Wow, I've really hit it out of the park so far.

"You ever made it out to Patch before?" Ah, of course, we were on Patch! That explains a lot, actually.

"No, can't say I have." At least that one's not a lie.

"What do you do for a living?"

"Mooch. I'm a student." I manage to laugh a bit at that, though it probably came out a lot harsher than I wanted it to. "Not combat or anything like that, though, obviously."

"Vale University?"

"Yeah."

I'd say I don't know why Qrow is so curious, but I know exactly what he's doing. It's not because he's a paranoid motherfucker either. Qrow is trying to keep me distracted. Keep me focused on answering their questions so I don't start thinking about everything else. If I have a breakdown in the middle of the forest it's a bad thing because I'm going to hold them up and an even worse thing because of the Grimm. They're right that I'm on the verge of seriously losing my shit. They're just wrong about why.

I won't complain. It's working. Probably better than he thought it would, because I actually have to think about every answer. I can feel a lot of emotions just beneath the surface, but I'm actually half-assed together at this point. I know the angst is going to come soon enough. But not yet.

"What kind of airship was it?" And Ruby fucks it up. Her intent was good- I can tell she'd figured out what Qrow was trying to do, but this was a terrible, terrible question to ask.

Or, at least, she would have fucked it up if the problem really was the crash. Wow, you know your world has turned upside down when "I was just in a plane crash" was the least of your concerns. Fortunately for her, I fucking love planes.

I could lie and say it was a Schnee-built airship flying for Atlas Airways, but sooner or later someone was going to take a closer look at the wreck and realize that it's literally not of this world. So I might as well be honest about it. This turned out to be a really good decision later, but I hadn't planned it that way.

I guess I'm not as unlucky as I thought.

"It's a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400," I answer automatically. "First time I've flown on one, and I guess it'll be the last fucking time too."

"A what?"

"Q400. It's a little twin-turboprop commuter plane. Holds about eighty people." At that point, I realized my mistake. Wow, great going. Come up with a Remnan appropriate cover story and then talk about Things That Don't Exist Here. Or maybe I'm lucky and all my guesses about Remnant were wrong and they _do_ exist.

Either way, hopefully Qrow and Ruby don't know shit about planes.

I didn't get a chance to find out. The trail- holy crap, we'd actually been walking on a trail for a while- gave way to a road into a quaint little town. It looked almost country and just surreal in a way. Probably the bright colours, and I mean _bright_.

Qrow patted me on the shoulder and pointed to the town. "See? That wasn't so bad. We made it."

"Made it where?" I asked, though I was pretty sure I already know.

"Home," Ruby answered needlessly. She darted out ahead, leading us around a bend back into the forest on a tangent to the town. Their cottage wasn't visible from the town itself, but it looked farther away than it actually was. It was maybe thirty seconds away by Ruby and a minute or two by me.

I raced to catch up and immediately regretted it. Terran IT type versus Remnan hunter type, do the math.

A blond man was waiting on the porch for us. He smiled at Ruby before eyeing me curiously. "Who's this?"

Okay, that description really doesn't do him justice. Blond hair, blue eyes, big guy. Tattoo on his right arm partially covered by a metal pauldron. He was dressed in a remarkably drab outfit considering that this planet was known for colour and their house clearly followed that convention.

I knew who the man was, but Qrow introduced us anyway. "Cyan, Taiyang Xiao Long. Tai, Cyan. He's a survivor from that crash we saw."

"Hi," I replied weakly.

"Well, come in, it's safe here," Taiyang said, waving me onto the porch. "You should probably call your parents or your friends or whatever, let them know you're okay."

I actually started doing that. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and unlocked it before realizing what a fucking stupid thing that was.

There was no network to connect to. No cell towers. No family to call, no friends to call, hell, no 411 assistance to call. No Canada, no United States, no Earth. No Windows, no Internet, no C and no Java. No Honda or Toyota or GM or Ford. No Wal-Mart, no Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. No fabulous Justin Trudeau. No BCIT or SFU or UBC. No USB or RBC.

Every person, every institution, every technology. Everything was gone.

"Excuse me." In a surprisingly smooth (for me) motion, I turn around and empty my stomach into the garden.

* * *

At least I missed the roses.

This chapter turned out a bit more depressing than I was hoping to make it. As expected, my biggest challenge is balancing realism with not making the story a giant ball of angst. There's definitely going to be a glut of that before other-me pulls his sorry ass out of the hole and decides to do something.

What will that something be? Wait and see. I will say that it will probably involve more hardware hacking than Grimm hacking.


	3. Patching Up

**Patching Up**

 _When you hit rock bottom, the only way is up.  
_ -Unknown

If I ever get out of this, I really ought to write a book about it. It would literally be a self-insert.

That's what this is. A self-insert. A fucking self-insert.

I must say, it's a lot less fun actually being there in the thick of it than it is reading about some other guy going through it. Your typical self-insert fic loves to talk about how boring and shitty their Earth life was and how awesome they are on Remnant. At least one writer has said that SI protagonists should never have anything to complain about.

Fuck them.

I'm not leaping into combat fighting monsters. I'm not even making plans on how to save the world. I'm standing on a stranger's porch throwing up into a flower garden tended by literal superheroes because I just stepped out of a burning airplane into a world of bullshit.

In the wise words of Mark Watney, I'm fucked.

"Hey, it's okay. You're safe now," a comforting voice told me. It must have been Taiyang- unlike the very distinctive Qrow I barely remembered what he sounded like. "You've been through a lot."

"You don't know the half of it," I replied glumly.

"Trust me, I'm a Huntsman, I probably have," he tried to reassure. "I've been in some pretty bad situations, and I always found a way to make it out."

"Dad, did someone just-" another voice shouted. I recognized Yang immediately. She looked- yeah, she looked pretty much as I imagined she would look. She wasn't wearing her canon outfit, but something fairly close to it. Brown fingerless gloves, calf-high brown boots, and a taupe jacket with a yellow shirt underneath. Judging by the helmet on her head, she was about to go for a ride. What's the rule, half my age plus seven?

Jesus, am I really thinking these thoughts? Now is really not the fucking time. I mean, never is the time, but now especially. Bouncing back and forth between existential dread and checking out underaged girls. What is this, anime?

"Cyan, meet my other daughter," Taiyang introduced. "Yang, this is Cyan. He survived that crash we saw."

"Hi, I'm Cyan," I said nervously. Yes, nervously. I'm really awkward around girls and apparently crash-landing on Remnant didn't change that.

"Tai, can you take care of this?" Qrow interrupted. Thank you, Qrow! "I've got to get back to Signal before the Headmaster kicks my ass."

"Yeah, sure, I've got it," Tai replied. "See you later, Qrow."

Have I mentioned how goddamn surreal the whole thing was? Like a dream, though. God, I wished it was a dream. Even then, though, I was pretty sure that ship had sailed. I'd already passed out and woken up once.

Taiyang interrupted my thoughts. "Do you have someone to call, Cyan?"

I answered honestly. "Not really."

He seemed to accept that at face value, though I figured he'd ask about it later. "Somewhere to go?"

"Not anymore." Hey, it wasn't a lie. I'm sure Taiyang could piece together what I was implying, even though he was actually totally wrong.

"Well, you can stay with us until we figure something out," he offered generously.

"Thank you," I managed. "Do you have a bathroom?"

"Down the hall and to the right." I barely noticed my surroundings as I made my way into the house and down the hallway. It smelled weird and looked lived-in. I was totally intent on that bathroom. I stepped inside, scoffed at the fluffy pink towels, and locked the door.

I broke down pretty much as soon as I sat down on the toilet. Emotions, drama, angst, suicidal thoughts and feelings, the whole cycle of grief, a lot of fucked-up shit. I managed to resist the urge to tear the room apart.

I kind of stumbled out of there. I'd tried to cover it up- guys don't cry, right?- but I'm pretty sure they knew what I was doing in there.

The rest of the day... I remember I had dinner, though not what it was. I remember the girls tried their hardest to make conversation. I remember literally telling someone to fuck off. I remember being shown to a guest bedroom and passing out as soon as I hit the bed.

* * *

The next day I didn't want to get up. I figured I'd wake up either at home or at my room in Vancouver, but nope. Only reason I got up at all was because of bodily functions. First I had to piss, then I had to eat. They offered brunch, I dug through the cupboards for cereal and mixed it with juice instead of milk, ate it anyway. Dinner was a sordid affair. Taiyang asked some questions and I answered in monosyllables. I forgot what the questions were. I didn't see Ruby and Yang much, though I'm pretty sure they were there.

* * *

The day after that, I kicked a hole in the wall. Taiyang told me that was okay, that Yang had already pretty much destroyed that wall already. I still felt like an asshole.

I also "learned" that Yang was 17 and heading into Beacon next year and Ruby was 15 and still went to Signal. I "learned" that both Qrow and Taiyang were nominally attached to that academy, though only Qrow actually taught.

Real fucking useful knowledge right there.

* * *

I don't remember the day after that one.

* * *

The day after the one I forgot, I tried to make smalltalk. Mostly I just sat there and did nothing, but I tried to make smalltalk too.

Taiyang was out doing huntsman stuff all day.

Yang was a lost cause. I think she hates me.

Ruby, on the other hand, despite our age difference and positions on the sliding scale of idealism versus cynicism, made a better conversation partner. Maybe she reminded me of me five years ago, what with her technical brilliance, overly optimistic morality, and general lack of social graces.

We started talking about technical stuff. Or, rather, _she_ started talking about technical stuff. Ruby loved guns and that's something the series kind of undersold. I mean, guns are cool, but Ruby takes this obsession to a new level. Basically, I mentioned the word gun in my typical depression voice and she goes on this animated tirade about weapons. I don't remember most of what she said, and I don't think I even understood it considering how fast she talked.

She figured I should have a weapon, because I did so well with Crescent Rose. I wouldn't consider ineffective panic firing doing well, but I wasn't about to argue with Ruby Fucking Rose. I let her draw up ridiculous sketches of absurd weapons and talk about attaching blades in all sorts of stupid ways. At the same time, I started fantasizing about what I'd actually like to carry. Maybe an OICW. Maybe just a little pistol.

Or, you know, maybe nothing at all. I'm not a hunter and nobody is after me. I'd probably just shoot myself in the foot. I guess Ruby's pretty good at being inspiring until reality finally sets in.

I might have _made_ the joke about shooting myself in the foot out loud. One way or another, the conversation turned to how Ruby wanted to be a huntress and why. I tried to pretend I was curious, I don't know if I was successful. And then she started talking about Aura.

Ruby then rather enthusiastically offered to unlock my Aura. I politely told her no. Not because I don't want superpowers. I didn't even know if that was possible or what adverse effects it might have. Do I have a soul? That's a question for philosophers and theologians. But I do believe that either I have a soul and so does Ruby or neither of us do. But Aura is not a thing on Earth and there are two possible explanations for it. Either our world isn't set up for it or we aren't.

On a partially related note, fuck Remnant.

* * *

The sixth day I decided that whether I liked it or not, I couldn't just hide in that guest room forever. I didn't want to get moving. I'll admit I was still in a very bad place mentally. But even though I didn't even want to get up, I had to drag my ass out and get moving for a lot of reason.

First, there's the very mundane, very pragmatic issue that I'm staying in a relative stranger's house and I have no job, no money, and no friends on this rock. Taiyang is a nice guy and I'm sure he'd let the fuckup that is me stay in his spare bedroom at least for the time being, but I can't help but feel dirty about it. So I needed to find a job or some alternative source of income. Do I need a social insurance number or the local equivalent to work here?

I'm actually surprised that I haven't been kicked out yet, actually. I mean, I could be a rapist or a murderer for all I know. But, then again, they're both huntresses in training and I'm, well, me. So I guess Taiyang considers me not really much of a threat. And I bet he's watching much more closely than it looks. He's probably still trying to figure out who the fuck I am. Maybe Ozpin's even telling him to do it.

I wonder when he's going to start asking about my story and picking it apart?

There's the crash itself. I still feel pretty shitty about what happened back there, but it really speaks to the fucked-upedness of the situation that it's actually pretty low on the list of things that wake me up screaming in the middle of the night. But I did catch a glimpse of the crash on whatever the Remnan equivalent of TV is, which got me thinking about it a bit. Sooner or later, they'd start asking questions and sooner or later that would lead them to me. I'd have to talk to the local equivalent of the NTSB. Maybe that would be a good thing, maybe it would be a bad thing.

Perhaps I could find a way back home some day, though that was probably overly optimistic thinking on my part. But there's an interesting question there. Is home really gone, or inaccessible? If I can never get back, does it matter? What do we count as reality?

I'm not a philosopher.

Of course, there's the giant fucking elephant in the room. Some time in the future, maybe soon and maybe not so soon but probably pretty soon, the shit was going to hit the fan. Cinder's plan would succeed, bye bye Beacon and bye bye peaceful world. Ruby and Yang were still here, which meant that I had a year or so. I think.

Oh, and I've been wearing the same damn clothes for six days and I haven't showered at all, so I feel unbelievably dirty and the girls have probably been avoiding me because I smell godawful.

I needed to do something. First order of business was to figure out what that something actually was.

* * *

On one hand, I feel this chapter is a bit of a cop-out. On the other hand, we're really just getting started.

Unfortunately, the next chapter will not come out as quickly as the past few. There are some other projects I want to devote some time to over the coming weeks.

Finally, I don't plan on doing review replies for this fic. I will reply to reviews in PMs and I'll bring up relevant points in the author's notes, but there will be no huge blocks of text at the bottom of the chapter in this story.


	4. Unpacking It All

**Unpacking It All**

 _Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.  
_ -Arthur Ashe

Okay, let's think this through logically. I still have my notebook- as in, an actual wirebound stack of paper- and a pen. I grab it and start writing.

Where am I? Remnant. More specifically? The Rose-Xiaolong house on Patch. That's easy-peasy.

When am I? Nobody's actually told me, but I think I can figure this one out. Yang still has both arms and the world hasn't gone to hell, so it's before the end of Volume 3. The fact that they're here and not at Beacon means that this is either before Volume 1 or during a holiday that was never shown on screen. I could figure this one out pretty quickly.

"Hey, what do you think about Weiss Schnee?" I shouted to nobody in particular.

It was Yang who answered. "She's a rich brat if you ask me."

Not how one would describe their teammate. That means Volume 1 hasn't started yet. But how far before Volume 1 were we?

There was a calendar in my room, but it meant little to me and I had no idea if it was open to the correct month. It was pretty sunny outside, but not boiling hot and there were a few clouds on the horizon. I would have guessed spring, but Yang and Ruby weren't actually going to school and hadn't since I got here. Early summer? "You're going back to Signal in a few months, right?"

"No, I'm finished. I'm going to Beacon." Her voice turned suspicious. "Why do you want to know?"

I chose not to answer. So, early summer. If and only if their calender was similar to our own, I had about two or three months until the beginning of Volume 1. I could reasonably assume their year was about the same length as our own if Remnant sat in the goldilocks zone, but I have no idea if their culture accommodated summer holidays.

Let's just assume that's similar to Earth and it is indeed summer holidays. That's the easy way out.

So I know when and where I am. That leaves a few open questions.

How similar is this reality to the show I've watched? Do I have Aura? Where the hell is the local NTSB equivalent? Is Ruby still going to make it into Beacon, or did I butterfly that? What the fuck am I going to do now?

Huh.

Back to taking stock. What do I have with me? I grab my backpack and lay out its contents on the desk, then empty my pockets beside it.

Front and centre is my Dell XPS 15. At the risk of sounding like I'm sexualizing an inanimate object, I stroke its smooth aluminum chassis and that becalms me a bit. Beside it I place the charger, mouse, and bag of cables. My phone, a hilariously outdated Galaxy S II, goes beside that, along with a pile of cables, chargers, and my Audio-Technica noise-cancelling (hah!) earbuds. I also have three USB drives: a 128GB Patriot, a 128GB Silicon Power, and a 16GB Sandisk. That constitutes all the tech I have.

Fat lot of good that'll do me here.

As for non-digital technology, I don't carry much anymore. There's the notebook I'm noting this stuff down in, an extra pen, a joke of a first aid kit and some useless keys. I brought one book with me. Kind of an obscure title, you probably haven't heard of it. _The Martian_ , by Andy Weir. I'd finished it on the ferry to Vancouver but left it in my pack for some reason.

I had a bit of food, too. A granola bar. A generic fruit roll-up. My five dollar water bottle, which is probably a wonderful sample of Terran microbiology by now.

Last but not least, my wallet. In it is my driver's license, my student card, a couple credit cards, a bunch of useless rewards cards, my bank card, a receipt, and $200 Canadian.

Well, that all does me a whole lot of no good.

"What's all that?" Ruby called, appearing in the doorway.

"Jesus Christ!" I half-toss my wallet onto the desk, spilling cards everywhere. "Don't sneak up on me."

"Sorry!" Ruby apologized, stopping in the doorway.

"No, it's fine, sorry, just... I'm on edge, so don't do that."

She pinched her nose. "Ew, what's that smell?"

"It's the dog?" I lied lamely. They had a dog, so it's not a _blatantly_ obvious lie.

"Uncle Qrow took Zwei with him last week," Ruby told me, skeptical.

"Okay, fine, it's me. I was going to shower, but I couldn't figure out the faucet." That's a lie, I haven't even looked. "And I was going to buy some clothes-" Really, I was! "But I don't actually have any money."

Still skeptical, Ruby asked "You don't have any money?"

"No, I don't have any cash, I was going to pick some up when we landed," I lied casually.

"Why don't you just go to the bank?"

"Uh..." Crap. Needed to think of something. "I lost my bank card in the crash."

Ruby pointed to my pile of cards on the desk. "None of those cards are you bank card?"

"No?" That was a weak lie and I knew it.

She crossed her arms and pouted. "You're a terrible liar, Cyan."

"I thought Yang was the suspicious one?" I deflected.

No answer, pout intensifying.

"Yeah, I am." I admitted. This is where I commit the cardinal sin of a self-insert and don't continue with a ridiculous cover story that's inevitably going to spiral out of control.

I mean, why bother? I probably shouldn't be announcing it to the world, because I don't want that much attention good or bad. But I'd save myself a lot of trouble if I came clean to Ruby right here and now, and I had enough on that desk to prove it with reasonable certainty.

Maybe I shouldn't drop the RWBY bombshell yet, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In other words, fuck it.

I reach over and pick up my bank card before handing it to Ruby. "I could swipe that a million times through every machine in Vale and it would never find my account. I'm not from around here, and I don't mean 'other side of Vale' not from around here. Why don't you get your sister and your dad? They're going to want to hear this too."

* * *

We gathered in the living room of the Xiao Long-Rose cottage. By cottage, I mean a decent single-family house that would probably fetch a cool million in Vancouver. Sunlight streamed through the windows. Both the fireplace and what I assumed was Remnan TV were off.

Time to drop the bombshell.

"I'm not from Remnant."

Ruby nodded.

Taiyang looked contemplative.

Yang exclaimed, "What?"

"I'm from a planet called Earth. It's populated by about seven billion people and zero Grimm. We're a little bit behind you in technology and we don't use Dust at all. Socially, we're not that different." I explained. "That doesn't matter. Look, the point is, until just under a week ago, I had no idea other worlds like this were more than a theoretical possibility. Then I ended up here."

I add quickly, "But I'm not a sci-fi alien. I didn't come here in a spaceship- in fact, I have not fucking idea how I ended up here. I was on a plane, something happened, we fell out of the sky and crashed here. I'm human like you, more or less. And against all odds I speak your language."

On one hand, it's hard to say all this. I feel like a crazy man, even though I believe my story absolutely. On the other hand, it's gloriously liberating. Getting this crazy secret off my chest before it drives me nuts. Not holding it back.

Well, I decide to leave the show out of this for now. I'll probably have to tell someone at some point. But it's better to get them used to the idea of other worlds first.

"So, believe it or not, that's my story. I'm from another world," I finish. "It's crazy but it's the truth."

Yang just glares at me like I'm growing a second head. I don't blame her.

Taiyang gives me a nod. I don't know what that means. Is that a "okay, I believe you" nod or a "you're full of shit" nod?

"Okay," Ruby says with a small smile. That surprised me, like, a lot.

"Okay?" I mean, I'm not complaining, but that was way too easy. "You're just going to accept my fucking insane explanation at face value."

"You feel different. Strange. Not bad, but different."

I think now is as good a time as any to mention I often say things without thinking about them. "Have you been feeling me up?"

"Excuse me?" Taiyang glares at me like I just murdered his daughter. Come on, I didn't go that far!

Quickly, I backtrack. "It's a joke, it's better where I come from, forget it." I turn to Ruby. "What do you mean by feeling?"

She explains slowly. "Your Aura. It feels different. Everyone has one, and they're all unique, but yours feels like... like it comes from far away."

"Huh." I guess I do have Aura, then? Unless she's picking up on something else, which is entirely possible. Like a shark. Don't sharks detect electrical impulses in the water? Maybe she can see some kind of technobabble quantum fluctuations or something.

"I'm not convinced," Taiyang dissents. "I've met a lot of people and you don't seem that different from anyone else. So, prove it. Prove that you're really from another world."

Well, I'd been expecting that. "Okay. Can you bring me my laptop?"

"Your what?"

How do you explain a laptop to someone unfamiliar with the term? I almost told them it was my computer, but it's the appearance they'd be confused about, not its function. "It's silver and black and says Dell on top. Be careful with it, it's quite delicate."

"Oh, that."

"I'll get it," Ruby says before dashing upstairs. I cringe inwardly. Ruby is not the most coordinated person on the planet, and if she drops my laptop I'm fucked. Fortunately, she comes back treating the machine like fine china, gingerly handing it to me.

I take it, put it on the coffee table, open the lid, and press the power button. The keyboard lights up briefly before the Dell logo comes up, followed by the Windows boot spinner showing up.

"I guess you guys don't really use laptops here," I comment as I wait for Windows to boot. Yes, I'm a caveman who shuts the thing down instead of just putting it to sleep. "These are very common and popular devices on Earth."

"It's like a portable terminal," Yang realized, following her dad around behind me.

"Sort of." I enter my password and log in. Battery at sixty percent. Okay, I have some time. What's the best thing to show them? Well, I figured Windows would be impressive enough, but I guess that would only really work for IT types. To my audience, it just looks like another computer. I bring up the Start Menu looking for something to show.

Ruby pointed to the clock in the lower right-hand corner. "The time is wrong. And the date doesn't make any sense."

"Exactly. Sort of," I answered. "There's an internal clock inside the laptop that keeps track of time. My last day on Earth was six days ago, but the machine doesn't know that. It just kept counting."

"Ah..."

I know I'm on the right track but they're not convinced yet. I open my Dropbox folder and realize that there's a nice incriminating _RWBY Story_ sitting in the root. I quickly zip into my pictures folder before they can see that.

What's there to show here? A few memes- mostly Polandball. An errant circuit diagram. An American flag for some reason. A bunch of pictures from a beach somewhere on Vancouver Island. My graduation. Friends. Family. All the places I left behind.

But not the fucking world map I was sure I kept in this folder. I scroll aimlessly up and down in search of it.

Taiyang stops me. "Okay. You didn't fake this. I believe you."

I let out the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "Okay?"

"Okay."

I push the power button on my laptop, drumming my fingers on the table as it shuts down. "So... what now?"

"You need to shower," Yang snarked.

"She's right. You should freshen up and make yourself halfway presentable. You can borrow some of my clothes," Taiyang tells me. "There's not much on Patch, but you can get the essentials. Yang will go with you."

"What?" Yang objected.

"You said you wanted to go into town anyway." Yang zero, Taiyang one.

Do I really want to go into town with Yangry Yang?

I'll deal with that later. I thank them all- okay, mostly Taiyang- and head upstairs to what I hope is the shower.

* * *

I tend to get contemplative when I have a moment alone. So I turn the water on in the shower and begin contemplating life, the universe, and everything.

I can't believe that I'm really here, on Remnant. It's not a "wow, this is amazing" kind of disbelief but more of the "how the fuck did this happen" kind of disbelief, like when you open awful spaghetti code that you wrote in high school. What is reality, anyway-

Fuck! How hot did they set their water heater? I'm going to go with "Yang".

Am I going to die here? I mean, Remnant is a dangerous place. I could get mauled by Grimm. Or shot by people. Have I painted a target on my own head just by being from Earth? I don't know what the knowledge I have is worth. It could be worthless trivia useful only to anthropologists, or I could incite a cultural and technological revolution. Nah. I probably know just enough to be dangerous. Maybe I should have taken Ruby up on her offer of a free forcefield.

How the fuck does this thing work? There are three goddamn dials. One is hot, one is cold... the other selects shower or spout. Okay.

Am I dead? Is this the afterlife? It's not heaven, that's for sure. Not quite hell. Maybe purgatory. Or am I dreaming? A very very real, very lifelike dream that I didn't know was possible. If a dream feels like life is there any meaningful distinction? Is life but a dream? Was I brought here by some deity for a purpose, or is this just random fuckery? Do they have soap here?

I'm guessing the blue gel is shampoo and the whitish gel is soap... nope, it's lotion. Why the hell do people put lotion in the shower? Seriously, just why?

What's going on over on Earth? Did that reality cease to exist when I ended up here, or is it still out there somewhere? No, it must be out there somewhere. It's been six days... meaning they're probably scaling back the search and telling people that everyone on that plane is probably dead. It's never even going to occur to anyone to search another goddamn reality for me, because that's so out of context nobody but the truly insane will ever contemplate it.

Shit.

Pointless pondering is a waste of time that's only going to lead me in circles. I have things to do. I need to figure out a way to charge my laptop, a way to transfer data off of it, a way to make money to buy things, how to deal with Yangry Yang, and what passes for normal clothing on this godforsaken planet.

Not necessarily in that order.

* * *

Why did this chapter take so much longer? Actually, I was on a roll with the other ones and didn't have a lot else to do. This is more in line with the kind of delay to expect. I'm still working on _The Remnan Exchange_ and a few other projects as well.


	5. Out With a Yang

I've been suffering from a bit of writer's block and also working on several other projects. But once I started writing this chapter the ideas started flowing.

I had more planned and I was on the fence about cutting down this chapter since it was growing out of control. In the end, I decided to keep most of it, but cut down the tail a little bit.

* * *

 **Out With a Yang**

 _The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her.  
_ -Marcelene Cox

"You've got to be kidding me," I groan, eyes darting between an irritated Yang and her prized Bumblebee.

I've never been on a motorbike, nor have I ever particularly wanted to. I heard that something like 50% of bikers die on their machines, and though that sounds a bit exaggerated the things still scare the shit out of me. I mean, some people take these things up to highway speed. That sometimes makes me nervous in an enclosed car full of airbags. A motorcycle is open-air and not even naturally stable. And I knew that Yang drives like crazy, which would only make things worse.

Yang raised an eyebrow. "What, are you scared?"

I answer honestly. "Yes. Very."

She grabs a black helmet and tosses it my way. "Just put it on, space man."

"Space man?" I ask, inspecting the helmet. Right away I realize this thing probably wouldn't pass CSA testing... or any sort of decent standard. It's more like the kind of thing a skateboarder might wear than a biker. But hey, maybe it's made out of super-duper metamaterials.

I'm just going to tell myself that.

"You say you're from another planet. So... space man."

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I mutter grimly, strapping the helmet on what I hope was the correct way. I was sure there was a double meaning to Yang's nickname. Was she calling me crazy?

"What?"

"Nevermind." I take a deep breath. "Let's just get this over with."

Yang swung her leg over her bike and started it with a button between the handlebars. Nervously, I climb on behind her and wrap my arms loosely around her waist. Any reservations about not appearing too close to a hot underaged girl went straight out the window the moment she hit the throttle. No chances. I held on for dear life as the wind stung my eyeballs and flayed my exposed skin. It's hot as fuck and the sun is boiling, yet I'm somehow freezing my ass off on the back of that bike.

The road trip consisted of me shouting a mix of profanities and questioning the legality of Yang's actions, and her laughing her goddamn ass off. It was a pretty short trip, maybe five minutes. Provided she wasn't speeding too bad, we went maybe five to ten kilometres. I didn't get a good look at where we were actually going. Neptune always has goggles, that lucky motherfucker.

On a barely related note, has anyone ever reflected on how unusual it is to have a girl driving and a guy riding behind on a motorcycle on Earth?

Needless to say, I'm beyond relief when we finally come to a stop and I unbury my face from the back of Yang's jacket. She hops off and laughs. I hobble off and dry heave.

We're parked at the edge of a nearly empty parking lot. Ahead of us was a strip mall that was surprisingly modern and inviting considering it's on the ass end of nowhere. I spotted a small grocery store, a disproportionately large clothing store, what might have been a hardware store, a barber or hairdresser, a pizza place and a few stores I had no idea about. On the other side of the street sat an apartment block and what looked like an insurance building.

"Well, this is the closest thing Patch has to a mall," Yang tells me. She hands me a stack of thick plastic cards. "500 lien. I've got to pick up some groceries for dad." With that she turns and struts away to the grocery store.

I take a deep breath. "Shit."

* * *

My first stop is the clothing store. I figure that's what I came here for and that's what I really need the most. Spectral Apparel would be best described as incredible, or possibly incredibly disorganized. In general, it looked very much like a normal clothing store, with tills at the front, racks upon racks of clothing in the middle, accessories scattered around, shoes along one wall, and fitting rooms in the back. A teenaged girl was comparing two shirts and a middle-aged man stepped out of one of the fitting rooms, frowning at a mirror.

But it's just different enough to be really freaky, like that one time I went south of the border. The tills are strange affairs with fluorescent green holographic displays. The cashier wore a tie-dye shirt that might actually be the store uniform considering the name. There was an obvious kids section, but no apparent division between mens and womens sections. The racks were just kind of shoved together with no obvious aisles.

And, of course, everything is super fucking bright colours.

I do my usual routine and start wandering. There are no baskets as far as I can tell, so I just start weaving my way through the racks. I give the stereotypical teenager and the creepy old guy a wide berth. I'm trying to find the men's clothing. On Earth, that's pretty easy. Bigger sizes, portraits of professional-looking guys, subdued colours. On Remnant, or at least in this store, it all looks the same.

I almost give up and start looking for shoes. I mean, my shoes were pretty worn when I got here and I should probably pick up some new ones anyway. On my way to the shoe shelf, a stack of t-shirts catches my eye. Solid colours, a bit bright but very much like what I wear on Earth. Men's or women's sizes? I pick up a nice blue one that's definitely not my size and try to read the tag.

Large, Fitted F, 65 Duratex/35 Hypalon. I pick up another one that looks and feels more normal. Large, Loose, 100 Duratex. I pick up a third one, this one similar to the first but differently shaped. Medium, Fitted M, 65 Duratex/35 Hypalon.

"Son of a bitch."

I can't find the men's section because it doesn't exist. Same shirt, different fit. But I guess that makes sense, doesn't it? There are no mens and womens clothes, only clothes that fit guys and clothes that fit girls.

Of course, I could be talking completely out of my ass and I'm going to walk out of here looking like a crossdressing circus clown. But I'd expected that already.

I check the price tag. Twenty lien, which could be cheap or a complete ripoff. I grab the blue shirt that looks like it's going to fit, the same one in forest green, a navy blue one and an orange one I'll probably never wear.

Now is probably a good time to mention that I hate shopping for clothing on a good day. Let alone a fucking horrible forty degree caffeine withdrawl day on another planet where nothing makes any damn sense.

Ahem. Next up, pants.

Sometimes I had a lot of trouble finding those on Earth. I saw a lot of brightly coloured trousers on racks, but, I mean, damn. There was a shelf full of blue jeans, too. I thought about that since they're so stereotypically Terran, but I actually kind of hate those damn things. No, I was looking for beige cargo pants. Oddly specific for someone in my position, wasn't it? Those I found in a neglected rack near the back corner.

I sifted through the rack before pulling out something that looked my size and was labelled _relaxed fit for men_. Close enough. The shirts I was pretty sure would fit, but the pants I had to try on. That was something I knew from personal experience. So I grabbed two pairs that looked the right size, one pair bigger and one pair smaller. Then carried the messy bundle of garments to the fitting rooms, tossed it inside and empty one, and slammed the door shut behind me.

My first guess was right. Thank god for small miracles.

"So, socks and underwear next?" a familiar voice asks as I step out of the fitting room.

I drop everything. "Damn it Yang!"

She smirks, eyeing my pile of clothing. "Wow, Space Man, you have an odd sense of style."

"Um." I know I don't have the greatest sense of style on Earth, what with cargo pants and tee shirts. Sometimes button-up shirts if I'm feeling fancy. I probably looked like a psychopath or something on Remnant.

"I guess people don't dress the same on your planet, huh."

"Not really," I reply, picking up my clothing but more or less leaving my bruised pride on the ground.

"Well, if it's your style, it's your style."

"I didn't pick all girls clothes, did I?"

"No, it's just that I thought your colour was blue."

"Huh?"

"Well, Cyan, right?" she asked. "But you can only put together one or two outfits that has any blue at all with that."

"We don't really have colours," I told her, finally catching on. Of course. Ruby is red, Yang is yellow, forever and always. Or some shit like that. "Cyan isn't even my real name. We don't have that tradition. Our great war was less _suppressing individuality_ and more _wiping out ethnic groups_."

She crossed her arms. "If you're really from another world, how do you know about the Great War?"

"What? I can read, you know," I lie. A simple lie that lets them draw their own conclusions is better. I think. I hope.

"Look, Ruby might believe you blindly, and I don't know what's up with dad, but I think you're hiding something." she accuses. "You're from somewhere else, fine. Maybe your airship really did crash, maybe this was your plan all along-"

"What's your problem with me, Yang?" I snap. I hadn't really meant to be that blunt, but it kind of slipped out.

"You don't make any sense!" Yang yelled. Great, she's going to draw a crowd. "Nothing about you! Somehow you're the only one who survived that airship crash, but you're reacting like a real survivor. You're so awkward and weird but I know there's a lot more going on in that head of yours. You tried to lie but you can't lie worth a damn. Your story is clearly made up yet I'm pretty sure you actually would have killed yourself if I hadn't showed up."

This, I'm totally shocked by. Mostly. "I'm- what? I tried to off myself?"

"Yeah. You were just sitting there in the bathroom with the door open," she told me, clearly and understandably perturbed. "Then you saw me, laughed like super harshly, and started listing off all the ways you could kill yourself. Things like hanging yourself with the shower hose, Cyan."

I have no answer for that. But I have to reply with _something_.

"Yang, listen to me. My world as I knew it is gone. I have no idea how I got here and no idea if there's a way back. My friends are gone. My family is gone. I am now alone in a strange land. I know enough about your world to know I don't want to be in it." I reply quietly, voice breaking. Big boys don't cry. "I don't know you understand depression on your world, or PTSD, or anything like that. I will be the first to admit _I am fucked up_. But there's no agenda here. I have no plan. Not for today, not for tomorrow, not for destroying the world or saving it."

Yang takes a step forward. She smells sweet. Wow. This entire situation and that's what I notice. Yang smells nice. Like whatever flowery shit is in Lady Speed Stick plus a hint of charcoal. That's borderline fucking perverted. "You're not alone, Space Man. Just stop lying."

I don't answer that either. "Everyone is staring at us."

"Ignore them," she tells me.

"They're staring," I repeat.

"Ignore them," she repeats. She turns to the teenage shopper, now staring at us with mouth agape. "Hey! Scram!"

I clear my throat. That was the most awkward fucking conversation I've ever had. Yeah, I know I've said that before I also know I'm going to be replaying that in my mind for the next week. For now, I just want to forget it. "Socks and underwear?"

Yang nods. "Socks and underwear."

Silently, I head over to the accessories section. The underwear was conveniently labelled in matching pant size, which probably saved my ass... maybe literally. I almost grab socks for size 8-10 shoes before realizing that they're a bit small and that shoe sizes are unlikely to match.

I sigh and take off one of my worn-out sneakers. I don't really want to talk to Yang, but she's standing right there. "What size you would say this shoe is?"

She wrinkles her nose at my filthy sneaker. "Maybe ten and a half or eleven?"

"Men's size or women's size?" I ask, putting the shoe back on. I'm one of those exceptionally lazy people who rarely actually ties his laces.

"Huh? Looks like an extra-wide if that's what you're asking."

"Right. Sure." I grab a package of size 10-12 socks, the long kind that apparently only old people and me wear. They look pretty much like socks. "I think I want some new shoes too... belt."

"What?"

There was a display of belts beside the socks. I grab one that doesn't look retarded. It turns out way too short. I grab a similar one that's longer. That one fits.

"Forty lien," I half-mutter, half-ask. "Is that reasonable for a belt here?"

Yang shrugs. "It's about average."

"Sure." I grab the belt and toss it onto the growing awkward pile of clothing in my arms.

"I can carry some of that," Yang offers.

"No, I'm fine." I wave my arm for emphasis and send half my clothes flying. "Okay, I'm not fine."

I hand over the remaining clothes and pick up the rest. Yang laughs at me as she expertly tucks the stack of apparel under her arm.

"I want to get some new shoes, too," I tell Yang. Without waiting for a reply, I head over to the shoe section.

I used to have a lot of trouble with shoe shopping. I could never find something I liked. Then I found one kind I liked and bought the same one for something like five years, which made things a lot easier. Obviously, that's not going to do me a lot of good here. I look for something similar and find a decent-looking white sneaker.

There's a price tag under it. At home I'd pay about twenty dollars for a shirt and ninety for a pair of shoes. These are only 45 lien? "At least shoes are cheaper. Relatively speaking."

"Those shoes are cheap because they're junk." Yang grabs the example shoe from my hand and bends it back and forth. "They wouldn't last even one hike."

"I don't plan on climbing mountains," I remind her. "They're probably still better than what you're wearing."

"Folded newspaper would be better than what you're wearing," she quips.

I don't really have a retort for that. I shrug and search for my size. At least in this store, buying shoes seems to be a find it yourself affair. A good-sized stack of boxes fits under the display shelves, spattered in bright colours and bold graphics. No bright Nike orange or subdued Reebok black, though. The shoes I'm looking for are S-Athletics 442s and they come in a grey box with an abstract white motif I don't understand at all

I pull out one, size 10.5 and extra wide. I open the box and pull out one of the shoes before stopping. "We're allowed to try them on here, right?"

Yang rolls her eyes. "Well, yeah. Is that not a thing where you come from?"

I let out another sigh before trying the shoes. They fit... not great, but tolerably. Hopefully they'll wear in. I take a few experimental steps before shoving the shoes back in their box.

"Okay, I think I'm done," I announce, probably too dramatically. "Let's pay and get out of here."

"Sure."

One trip through the till avoiding eye contact later, I'm 230 lien poorer and I finally have some fresh clothing that fits me.

I'm honestly kind of surprised that I went that long without.

We're headed back out toward Bumblebee (honestly, why couldn't it be the _other_ Bumblebee?) when I think of something. "Hey, Yang, I know you were just there but could we check out the grocery store? "

"That's probably a good idea."

* * *

Like the clothing store, the grocery store is pleasantly air conditioned. Maybe a few degrees cooler, actually. It looks kind of an IGA or a country market. Near the entrance is a line of six tills and a customer service counter, sparsely staffed. Produce is on the right, dairy and meat along the back, bakery on the left, everything else in between. I don't recognize any of the brands, but it's clearly a grocery store.

My target is nestled between housewares and snack foods. I pick up a normal-looking toothbrush and some Shi-nee toothpaste (because why not) but I can't seem to find any floss. I do find a travel-sized mouthwash and some soap that doesn't smell completely horrible (but might cause me to break out in hives). I sniff some of the deodorant, can't stand any of it, and grab the least offensive anyway. There's probably something else I'm missing, but I have no idea what.

Someone laughs. That's right. I almost forget that Yang is standing right behind me. I'm slightly embarrassed when I remember that.

I dump everything into my shopping basket before heading over one aisle where I pick up a bag of barbecue chips, a Phoam chocolate bar, and a nice cold Schnee cola.

"Those will make you fat," Yang tells me.

"That's literally the least of my worries right now," I shoot back.

I take a longing look at the liquor section on my way to the till. I don't really drink- only when the occasion warrants it. This occasion certainly does, and a fuck of a lot of it too. I'm almost certainly old enough to drink here, but I doubt they'd accept my ID.

Close, but no cigar. Or booze, in this case.

Twenty-seven lien, poof. It's a nice number. I make sure to keep the receipt. I'm still trying to get a handle on prices. Most of it you can almost replace dollars with lien and have the same number, but some things are really expensive and some things are really cheap.

By the time we're through the grocery store, I'm feeling slightly more human again. There's something to be said for retail therapy, I guess. It almost feels normal to spend money on mundane shit again. It's more like the quiet shops of my little hometown than the hustle and bustle of Metrotown or Pacific Centre, but either way it's shockingly familiar for a crazy death world.

I'm even with a girl and nobody else! It's like a date, almost. A very awkward date that would be illegal in some jurisdictions with someone who could and probably would pound me into a fine paste and also hates me.

Maybe there's a reason I'm single.

"Ready for the ride back?" Yang asks me as we head back into the parking lot.

I'd forgotten about that. "Oh sweet Jesus..."


End file.
